The best community colleges provide an effective springboard into higher education, offering students high-quality two-year degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The top rated community colleges offer a broad selection of associate’s degrees, affordable tuition rates, and strong partnerships with public four-year schools so that students can easily transfer their credits into accredited bachelor’s degree programs.
A community college is a public two-year college that awards associate degrees as well as some professional certifications. Community colleges typically attract students drawn from the surrounding region. Top community colleges tend to offer a wide selection of associate degrees spanning a variety of disciplines. Community colleges can be especially attractive to students interested in getting an affordable start on a four-year degree. So too, these schools appeal to students seeking professional two-year degrees designed to provide technical and practical skills for immediate entrance into the job market.
We’ve identified 839 community colleges in the US. In order to be included in this list of the best community colleges, a school needs to satisfy the following three conditions:
The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. For associate degree rankings, we rank the best two-year colleges based upon what we call “Concentrated Influence.” Concentrated Influence takes the combined influence score of a college’s top academic influencers (including faculty and alums) and divides it by the school’s total number of students.
Using concentrated influence gives small and mid-sized schools an opportunity to shine by taking away the size advantage of larger schools. A small school with proportionately more influential faculty than a large school, whose influence in absolute terms may be bigger, will nonetheless score higher in a concentrated influence ranking. Our approach highlights community colleges that truly rank for excellence, regardless of size.
If you are serious about finding the best community colleges for an associate’s degree or professional certification, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence.
Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Concentrated Influence provides a ranking which is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.
Find out more about our ranking methodology here.
Tuition + fees
$9K
Graduation
27%
Student body
7K
Anne Arundel Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
50%
Student body
1K
Roxbury Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
24%
Student body
1K
Eastern Maine Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
24%
Student body
3K
Springfield Technical Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
30%
Student body
3K
College of Marin’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
25%
Student body
9K
Los Angeles City College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
32%
Student body
2K
Lamar Institute of Technology’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$12K
Graduation
28%
Student body
2K
Kennedy–King College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
51%
Student body
3K
West Kentucky Community and Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
21%
Student body
2K
Lamar State College–Port Arthur’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Graduation
28%
Student body
14K
Montgomery College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
28%
Student body
2K
Mitchell Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
24%
Student body
2K
University of Arkansas – Pulaski Technical College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
17%
Student body
3K
Northern Essex Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
46%
Student body
3K
Eastern Arizona College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
20%
Student body
3K
Massachusetts Bay Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Graduation
35%
Student body
5K
County College of Morris’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
15%
Student body
7K
Bunker Hill Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
34%
Student body
8K
Chabot College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
23%
Student body
3K
Holyoke Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
11%
Student body
2K
Capital Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
36%
Student body
1K
Columbia College ’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
11%
Student body
1K
BGSU Firelands’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$9K
Graduation
29%
Student body
8K
Brookdale Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
20%
Student body
4K
Bossier Parish Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
26%
Student body
9K
Los Angeles Valley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$4K
Graduation
28%
Student body
5K
Butler Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$13K
Graduation
20%
Student body
1K
Community College of Beaver County’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$2K
Graduation
65%
Student body
14K
De Anza College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
41%
Student body
1K
Western Piedmont Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
26%
Student body
13K
Sacramento City College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
37%
Student body
14K
City College of San Francisco’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
22%
Student body
11K
Nassau Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
40%
Student body
5K
West Valley College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
25%
Student body
2K
Santa Fe Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
33%
Student body
14K
Fullerton College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
19%
Student body
6K
Bronx Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
21%
Student body
4K
Merritt College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
24%
Student body
4K
Trinity Valley Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
32%
Student body
1K
Lassen Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
34%
Student body
6K
Northwest Mississippi Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$2K
Graduation
18%
Student body
12K
Mesa Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
48%
Student body
2K
North Dakota State College of Science’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$2K
Graduation
17%
Student body
4K
Scottsdale Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$6K
Graduation
43%
Student body
2K
Richland Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
32%
Student body
11K
LaGuardia Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$5K
Graduation
33%
Student body
1K
Central Wyoming College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$10K
Graduation
51%
Student body
3K
Lewis and Clark Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$1K
Graduation
34%
Student body
2K
Cañada College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
Tuition + fees
$3K
Graduation
18%
Student body
3K
Baltimore City Community College’s faculty and alumni have been influential in:
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